The N.C. Department of Transportation is planning a $1.7 million improvement project on Monteith Gap Road in Cullowhee following passage of an endorsement resolution from the Jackson County Commissioners.

Last Friday, right around noon, I received a message on Facebook. It was a fella looking to purchase my old pickup truck. Though the engine had died in October, the beloved truck itself was still sitting in front of my apartment in Waynesville. Partly due to my longtime and sentimental history with the vehicle, partly, due to the mere fact nobody had shown any interest (yet) in taking it off my hands.

For over a century the sound of wheels on wood have greeted residents of and visitors to the Lake Junaluska Assembly alike as cars, trucks, people and pets cross the bridge over the Lake Junaluska Dam.

After a series of contentious public hearings almost a year ago resulted in outcry from nearly all quarters of Waynesville, the North Carolina Department of Transportation has officially backed off designs that would have changed the character of one of the town’s most historic and aesthetically significant streets.

The obtuse angles of the intersection at Waynesville’s North Main and Walnut streets may soon become graceful curves — or even a roundabout — by 2020, depending on what happens with the now-underway public involvement phase of the project.

Since 2005, I’ve routinely traversed a never-ending stretch of Interstate 81 from north-central Pennsylvania into Eastern Tennessee. Some of the trips were for business, others for pleasure, with every single trek one of personal reflection amid a wide-spectrum of the beauty — physical and spiritual — that is singular to the identity of America.